Bat Ye'or (Hebrew: בת יאור) (meaning "daughter of the Nile" in Hebrew; a pseudonym of Gisèle Littman, née Orebi) is a controversial British writer specializing in the history of non-Muslims in the Middle East, and in particular the history of Christian and Jewish dhimmis living under Islamic governments.^[1] She is considered by the International Humanist and Ethical Union to be a leading expert on Jihad and the concept of Dhimmitude.^[2] “Hebrew” redirects here. ... The Nile (Arabic: , transliteration: , Ancient Egyptian iteru, Coptic piaro or phiaro) is a major north-flowing river in Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world. ... A pseudonym (Greek: , pseudo + -onym: false name) is an artificial, fictitious name, also known as an alias, used by an individual as an alternative to a persons legal name. ... A Dhimmi, or Zimmi (Arabic ذمّي), as defined in classical Islamic legal and political literature, is a person living in a Muslim state who is a member of an officially tolerated non-Muslim religion. ... Founded in Amsterdam in 1952, International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) is the sole world umbrella organisation [1] embracing Humanist, atheist, rationalist, secular, skeptic, Ethical Culture, freethought and similar organisations world-wide. ... For other uses, see Jihad (disambiguation). ... This article is about dhimmi in the context of Islamic law. ...

She is the author of eight books, including Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (2005), Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (2001), The Decline of Eastern Christianity: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (1996), and The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam (1985).

She has provided briefings to the United Nations^[2] and the U.S. Congress^[3] and has given talks at major universities such as Georgetown, Brown, Yale, Brandeis, and Columbia.^[4][5] UN and U.N. redirect here. ... The Congress of the United States is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States of America. ... Georgetown University is an elite private research university located in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., United States. ... Brown University is a private university located in Providence, Rhode Island. ... Yale redirects here. ... Brandeis University is a private university located in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States. ...

Early life

Bat Ye'or was born in 1933 in Cairo, Egypt but she and her parents left Egypt in 1957, arriving in London as stateless refugees.^{[citation needed]} Beginning in 1958 she attended the Institute of Archaeology at University College, London and in 1959 became a British citizen by marriage. She moved to Switzerland in 1960 to continue her studies at the University of Geneva.^[6] For other uses, see Cairo (disambiguation). ... A stateless person is someone with no citizenship or nationality. ... The Institute of Archaeology is an academic department of University College London (UCL), in the United Kingdom. ... The Front Quad University College London, commonly known as UCL, is one of the colleges that make up the University of London. ... The University of Geneva (Université de Genève) is a university in Geneva, Switzerland. ...

She describes how her experiences influenced her research interests:

I had witnessed the destruction, in a few short years, of a vibrant Jewish community living in Egypt for over 2,600 years and which had existed from the time of Jeremiah the Prophet. I saw the disintegration and flight of families, dispossessed and humiliated, the destruction of their synagogues, the bombing of the Jewish quarters and the terrorizing of a peaceful population. I have personally experienced the hardships of exile, the misery of statelessness − and I wanted to get to the root cause of all this. I wanted to understand why the Jews from Arab countries, nearly a million, had shared my experience. For other uses, see Jeremiah (disambiguation). ...

She is married to British historian David Littman, with whom she frequently collaborates.^[5] David Littman is a British historian and has served as a representative for the World Union for Progressive Judaism and other NGOs to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva since 1986. ...

Research

Her first book, The Jews in Egypt, was published in 1971, along with a study of Egyptian Coptic Christians, under the Arabic nom de plume Yahudiya Masriya, meaning "Egyptian Jewess". Christ - Coptic Art Coptic Orthodox Christianity is the indigenous form of Christianity that, according to tradition, the apostle Mark established in Egypt in the middle of the 1st century AD (approximately AD 60). ... Arabic redirects here. ... A pen name or nom de plume is a pseudonym adopted by an author. ...

She is known for employing the neologism dhimmitude, which she discusses in detail in Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide. She credits assassinated Lebanese president-elect and Phalangist militia leader Bachir Gemayel with coining the term. The word dhimmitude is a neologism, imported from the French language, and derived from the Arabic language word dhimmi. ... Phalange redirects here. ... Bachir Gemayel Bachir Gemayel, first name also spelt Bashir (Arabic: بشير الجميل), (November 10, 1947 – September 14, 1982) was a Lebanese military commander, politician and president elect. ...

Ye'or describes dhimmitude as the "specific social condition that resulted from jihad," [1] and as the "state of fear and insecurity" of "infidels" who are required to "accept a condition of humiliation."^[7] She believes that "the dhimmi condition can only be understood in the context of Jihad," and studies the relationship between the theological tenets of Islam and the sufferings of the Christians and Jews who, in different geographical areas and periods of history, have lived in Islamic majority areas.^[8][9] The cause of jihad, she argues, "was fomented around the 8th century by Muslim theologians after the death of Muhammad and led to the conquest of large swathes of three continents over the course of a long history."^[10] She says:

Dhimmitude is the direct consequence of jihad. It embodie[s] all the Islamic laws and customs applied over a millennium on the vanquished population, Jews and Christians, living in the countries conquered by jihad and therefore Islamized. [We can observe a] return of the jihad ideology since the 1960s, and of some dhimmitude practices in Muslim countries applying the sharia [Islamic] law, or inspired by it. I stress ... the incompatibility between the concept of tolerance as expressed by the jihad-dhimmitude ideology, and the concept of human rights based on the equality of all human beings and the inalienability of their rights.^[11] Political Ideologies Part of the Politics series Politics Portal This box:      An ideology is an organized collection of ideas. ... This article is about Islamic religious law. ... Human rights are rights which some hold to be inalienable and belonging to all humans. ...

Jacques Ellul attempts to summarize her views in the foreword to The Decline (see below), saying that Ye'or focuses on "jihad and dhimmitude ... as ... two complementary institutions... [T]here are many interpretations [of jihad]. At times, the main emphasis is placed on the spiritual nature of this 'struggle'. Indeed, it would merely [refer to] the struggle that the believer has to wage against his own evil inclinations.... [T]his interpretation ... in no way covers the whole scope of jihad. At other times, one prefers to veil the facts and put them in parentheses. [E]xpansion [of Islam] ... happened through war!" [2] Though Bat Ye'or acknowledges that it is not the case that all Muslims subscribe to so-called "militant jihad theories of society," she argues that the role of the sharia in the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam demonstrates that what she calls a perpetual war against those who won't submit to Islam is still an "operative paradigm" in Islamic countries.^[12] This article does not cite its references or sources. ... Wikisource has original text related to this article: Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam The Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI) is a declaration of the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which provides an overview on the Islamic perspective on human rights, and...

Bat Ye'or has focused on the rapid transformation of Eastern Christian lands into Islamic territories, concluding that corruption and division among Christians contributed^[13] and may even have afforded Islam certain models of legal control of subjugated populations; she suggests that Yugoslavia is an example of the long-term scars of dhimmitude, where Christians were under that status for centuries.^[14] Eastern Christianity refers collectively to the Christian traditions which developed in Greece, the Near East and Eastern Europe. ... Yugoslavia (Jugoslavija in the Latin alphabet, Југославија in Cyrillic; English: South Slavia, or literary The Land of South Slavs) describes three political entities that existed one at a time on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the 20th century. ...

Other issues Bat Ye'or has written on include:

• The existence or lack thereof of pluralism in Islamic culture, with a focus on Eastern Europe; [3]
• Violations of human rights in Islamic cultures; [4]
• The theological rules that govern jihad; [5]
• How Muslims interpret the history of the dhimmi peoples; [6]
• How the Muslim interpretation of religious scripture influences Islamic interpretation of history and modern-day events; [7]
• The "dialog of civilizations" and the "negation of the other." [8]

Pre-1989 division between the West (grey) and Eastern Bloc (orange) superimposed on current national boundaries: Russia (dark orange), other countries of the former USSR (medium orange),members of the Warsaw pact (light orange), and other former Communist regimes not aligned with Moscow (lightest orange). ... For other uses, see Jihad (disambiguation). ... This article is about dhimmi in the context of Islamic law. ... Many religions and spiritual movements hold certain written texts (or series of spoken legends not traditionally written down) to be sacred. ...

Eurabia

In Bat Ye'or's most recent book, 2005's Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, she explores the history of the relationship from the 1970s onwards between the European Union, previously the European Economic Community, and the Arab states, tracing what she sees as connections between radical Arabs and Muslims, on the one hand, and fascists, socialists and Nazis, on the other hand, in the origins and growing influence, as she sees it, of Islam over European culture and politics.^[15]

She herself can take some credit for the term "Eurabia" in this context; though the term was first used as a title of a journal initiated in the mid-1970s by the European Committee for Coordination of Friendship Associations with the Arab world, she popularized it as a term for Arab/Islamic influence over Europe. She explains the term's origins in the book: Cover of The Economist magazine, June 24-30, 2006 edition Eurabia is a neologism that denotes a scenario where Europe allies itself and eventually merges with the Arab world. ...

Eurabia is a geo-political reality envisaged in 1973 through a system of informal alliances between, on the one hand, the nine countries of the European Community (EC) which, enlarged, became the European Union (EU) in 1992 and on the other hand, the Mediterranean Arab countries. The alliances and agreements were elaborated at the top political level of each EC country with the representative of the European Commission, and their Arab homologues with the Arab League's delegate. This system was synchronised under the roof of an association called the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) created in July 1974 in Paris. A working body composed of committees and always presided jointly by a European and an Arab delegate planned the agendas, and organized and monitored the application of the decisions.

Views

Bat Ye'or's work has attracted praise and criticism from academic historians and political commentators on Islam and the Middle East.

British historian Sir Martin Gilbert writes of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis that it "presents a wide range of historical and contemporary documents and facts to tell the story of how the European Union is being subverted by Islamic hostility to the very ethics and values of Europe itself. Readers who seek a fair resolution of the Arab-Israel conflict will be shocked by the evidence produced in these pages of unfair pressures and deliberate distortions. Europe's independence of spirit is shown in the process of being undermined."^[16] Sir Martin John Gilbert, CBE (born October 25, 1936 in London) is a British historian and the author of over seventy books, including works on the Holocaust and Jewish history. ...

Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, has written that "[n]o writer has done more than Bat Ye'or to draw attention to the menacing character of Islamic extremism. Future historians will one day regard her coinage of the term 'Eurabia' as prophetic."^[17] American writer Robert Spencer, who specializes in highlighting the dangers of Islam, has described her as "the pioneering scholar of dhimmitude, of the institutionalized discrimination and harassment of non-Muslims under Islamic law". He argues that she has turned this area, which he believes the "Middle East studies establishment" has hitherto been afraid of or indifferent to, into a field of academic study.^[18] British writer David Pryce-Jones calls her a "Cassandra, a brave and far-sighted spirit." ^[19] Niall Ferguson Niall Ferguson (b. ... Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ... Robert Bruce Spencer (born 1962) is an American writer on Islam. ... David Pryce-Jones (1936-) is a conservative British author and commenter. ... For other uses, see Cassandra (disambiguation). ...

Michael Sells, John Henry Barrows Professor of Islamic History and Literature at the University of Chicago, argues that "by obscuring the existence of pre-Christian and other old, non-Christian communities in Europe as well as the reason for their disappearance in other areas of Europe, Bat Ye’or constructs an invidious comparison between the allegedly humane Europe of Christian and Enlightenment values and the ever present persecution within Islam. Whenever the possibility is raised of actually comparing circumstances of non-Christians in Europe to non-Muslims under Islamic governance in a careful, thoughtful manner, Bat Ye’or forecloses such comparison."^[20] Michael A. Sells is currently the John Henry Barrows Professor of Islamic History and Literature at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. ... For other uses, see University of Chicago (disambiguation). ...

John Esposito, a scholar on Islamic history, criticized Bat Ye'or for lacking academic credentials.^[5] For the pianist named John Esposito, see John Esposito (pianist). ...

In a review of The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude the American historian Robert Brenton Betts commented that the book dealt with Judaism at least as much as with Christianity, that the title was misleading and the central premise flawed. He said: "The general tone of the book is strident and anti-Muslim. This is coupled with selective scholarship designed to pick out the worst examples of anti-Christian behavior by Muslim governments, usually in time of war and threats to their own destruction (as in the case of the deplorable Armenian genocide of 1915). Add to this the attempt to demonize the so-called Islamic threat to Western civilization and the end-product is generally unedifying and frequently irritating."^[21]

According to the American scholar Joel Beinin, Bat Ye'or exemplifies the "neo-lachrymose" perspective on Egyptian Jewish history. According to Beinin, this perspective has been "consecrated" as "the normative Zionist interpretation of the history of Jews in Egypt"; it draws its authority from Bat Ye'or's claim to authenticity as an Egyptian Jew and has "won broad acceptance among both scholars and the general public in Israel and the West." ^[22] Joel Beinin, Ph. ...

Johann Hari, a British journalist, writes that Bat Ye'or's works reveal "an ideology startlingly similar" to anti-Semitism. He likens Ye'or's views to "a 21st century Protocols of the Elders of Mecca" (a reference to the notorious twentieth century antisemitic forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion).^[23] Johann Hari (born January 21, 1979) is a British journalist and writer. ... This box:      Islamophobia is a criticized[1][2] though increasingly accepted[3][4] term that refers to prejudice or discrimination against Islam or Muslims. ... The Eternal Jew: 1937 German poster. ... 1992 Russian edition of the Protocols, adapting Eliphas Levis portrayal of Baphomet. ...

Craig R. Smith in a New York Times article referred to her as one of the "most extreme voices on the new Jewish right."^[24] The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ...

Works

On-line bibliography

• Bibliography of Bat Ye'or

Books

• Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, 2005, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 0-8386-4077-X
• Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, 2001, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 0-8386-3942-9; ISBN 0-8386-3943-7 (with David Littman, translated by Miriam Kochan)
• The Decline of Eastern Christianity: From Jihad to Dhimmitude;seventh-twentieth century, 1996, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 0-8386-3678-0; ISBN 0-8386-3688-8 (paperback).
• The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam, 1985, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 0-8386-3233-5; ISBN 0-8386-3262-9 (paperback). (with David Maisel, Paul Fenton and David Littman; foreword by Jacques Ellul)
• Les Juifs en Egypte, 1971, Editions de l'Avenir, Geneva (in French, title translates as "The Jews in Egypt")

Book chapters

• "The Dhimmi Factor in the Exodus of Jews from Arab Countries" in: Malka Hillel Shulewitz (ed.), The Forgotten Millions. The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands, Cassell, London/New York 1999; Continuum, 2001, ISBN 0826447643 (pp. 33-51)
• "A Christian Minority. The Copts in Egypt" in: Case Studies on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. A World Survey. 4 vols. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976, ISBN B000KESXYQ

Documentaries

• Contribution to the documentary Islam: What the West Needs to Know

Fairleigh Dickinson University is a U.S. private university founded in 1942. ...

See also

• Ayaan Hirsi Ali
• Bruce Bawer
• Steven Emerson
• Oriana Fallaci
• Victor Davis Hanson
• Bernard Lewis
• Daniel Pipes
• Robert Spencer
• Ibn Warraq

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, MA ( ; Somali: ; born Ayaan Hirsi Magan 13 November 1969[2] in Mogadishu, Somalia) is a Dutch feminist and political writer, daughter of the Somali scholar, politician, and revolutionary opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse. ... Bruce Bawer, (born October 31, 1956 in New York City), is a gay American literary critic, writer, and poet. ... Steven Emerson is an American investigative journalist specializing in national security, terrorism, and Islamic extremism. ... Oriana Fallaci Oriana Fallaci (born July 29, 1930) is an Italian journalist , author, and political interviewer. ... Victor Davis Hanson giving a lecture at Kenyon College. ... For the founder of the River Island retail chain, see Bernard Lewis (entrepreneur). ... Daniel Pipes in Copenhagen Daniel Pipes (born September 9, 1949) is an American historian and analyst who specializes in the Middle East. ... Robert Bruce Spencer (born 1962) is an American writer on Islam. ... Ibn Warraq is the pen name of an author of several books on Islam. ...

Notes

For the original newspaper of the same name, see The New York Sun (historical) The New York Sun is a contemporary five-day daily newspaper published in New York City. ... The Rutherford Institute is a public interest law firm and resource center based in Charlottesville, Virginia. ... Brown University is a private university located in Providence, Rhode Island. ... The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is a department of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) which designs, builds and operates the reconnaissance satellites of the United States government. ... Colorado State University is a public institution of higher learning located in Fort Collins, Colorado in the United States. ... Colorado State University is a public institution of higher learning located in Fort Collins, Colorado in the United States. ... The American Thinker, is a daily internet publication with articles on the topics of national security, economics, diplomacy, and military strategy[1]. The articles published are often mentioned on The Rush Limbaugh Show. ... Sir Martin John Gilbert, CBE (born October 25, 1936 in London) is a British historian and the author of over seventy books, including works on the Holocaust and Jewish history. ... Niall Ferguson Niall Ferguson (b. ... David Pryce-Jones (1936-) is a conservative British author and commenter. ... Middle East Policy is the leading academic peer-reviewed journal on the Middle East region in the field of foreign policy founded in 1982, published quarterly by Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Middle East Policy Council and available online with subscription via Blackwell Synergy. ... Johann Hari (born January 21, 1979) is a British journalist and writer. ...

Further reading

• Dhimmi.org and Dhimmitude.org, websites maintained by Bat Ye'or
• "How to concoct a conspiracy theory" by Thomas Jones (London Review of Books)
• "Captive Continent" (a review of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis) by David Pryce-Jones, Senior Editor of National Review, writing for Benador Associates